The House on Creek Road

by Caron Todd

  He didn’t answer right away. After a moment he gave an embarrassed shrug. “That sounds so plaintive. I’ve got a detailed spreadsheet on my laptop. I’ve got a business plan. I’ve projected when I should break even, and how many blueberries, pumpkins and trees I’ll have to sell to make the profit I’m looking for—”

  “In fact, you’re a coldhearted businessman.”

  He looked more comfortable at that. “Now you understand.”

  She wanted to ask him to hold her. His arms would feel warm and strong and she could burrow in…ridiculous. She would have to remember what she’d insisted to Pam and Emily yesterday. As nice as Jack was, their lives were moving in different directions. Whatever they were starting to feel, the only sensible thing was to ignore it.

  AFTER HIS PATHETIC DISPLAY of independence, sulking off for breakfast pizza, Reid returned to his office, ready to work no matter how annoying Croker was. He began running the password cracking program, and in less than an hour the first password fell. Program1.exe, the file was called, a promising sounding name if he’d ever heard one, although he couldn’t believe Jack would give an important file a promising sounding name. More likely, Family Pics, or One Dish Meals for the Single Male.

  He double-clicked to open the file. Up popped a box with a title bar that said, “WinZIP Self-Extractor.” That meant Jack had compressed many files into one, and had thoughtfully provided a program to decompress them.

  A second box materialized underneath the first. It showed files being extracted from Jack’s diskette and downloaded onto Reid’s hard drive, one after another, the progress bar zipping along like crazy. Without him even asking, it went on downloading the other files on Jack’s disk. Reid sat patiently, thinking about what he might see when the download stopped and he could look at Program1.exe. It didn’t seem likely that he’d luck onto the code while opening the first of two hundred files. It couldn’t be that easy.

  It couldn’t be that easy. That was exactly what he was thinking when another box jumped into the picture. An attention-getting warning box. An unknown virus had found its way onto his system.

  Reid’s hand, already on its way to the reboot button, dropped onto his lap. The bug was on his system. Not on Jack’s disk and not in the computer’s RAM, where it could easily be zapped by rebooting. He’d run a virus check! That sneaky…

  There was nothing he, or his soon to be replaced antivirus program, could do. He sat watching Jack’s bug do its stuff. Very pretty stuff, he had to admit. Protective, not destructive. It put some kind of shell around all the downloaded files. Interesting. He’d like to know how Jack had programmed that.

  The problem was Reid’s cutting-edge cracker program was now useless.

  Or maybe not. He popped the diskette out of the first computer and into a second one. He would find a way to isolate and destroy the virus, then he’d attempt another download.

  Not so fast, he could picture Jack saying. The virus had done one more job. It had written over everything on the disk. Near the end of Reid’s minute or so of swearing, Croker came into the office.

  “Something wrong?”

  “You could say that.” Briefly, Reid explained the events of the past few minutes. Of course, Croker didn’t understand.

  “What can you do about it?”

  “Not a thing.”

  Croker blinked at the unwelcome reply. “Not a thing? This is what you’re here for.”

  Reid stared at the monitor until he was sure his response wouldn’t sound angry. How could he best explain what Jack’s virus had accomplished? “If you wrote on the sand and someone came along dragging a fistful of sticks through the letters, could you put all the grains of sand back the way they’d been, leaving the original letters intact?”

  Croker looked at him as if to say, “Yeah, sure you can, if you know what you’re doing.” The guy didn’t know the first thing about computers. He seemed to think they were magic, and that Reid was one lousy magician.

  Reid tried to sound patient. “It’ll take time to figure this out. It’s a difficult problem.” Actually, it was an impossible one, but the more he got to know Croker, the less willing he was to tell him things like that.

  “I don’t want to hear how difficult it is. I want it fixed.”

  Good for you. Being really firm when you’re absolutely ignorant always makes problems go away.

  With a frown on his face and a cell phone to his ear, Croker left the room. Reid pulled a paper lunch bag out of a desk drawer, took one look at it and swallowed two Tylenol and a couple of antacid tablets instead.

  LIZ AND JACK SAT SIDE BY SIDE in two Muskoka chairs that had been on the veranda for as long as Liz could remember. Their coats were fastened, their hoods pulled up, and their gloved hands wrapped around mugs of cocoa to keep either from getting cold. Liz could feel Jack in the dark, even more aware of his body and its energy than she was in daylight. His voice sounded deeper, too. More personal.

  “That wasn’t so bad.” No one had collapsed halfway through dinner, pointing a blaming finger in her direction as they breathed their last, so she was happy.

  “Dinner? It was great.”

  “I cheated. The vegetables were from Grandma’s garden. They were frozen, but they still tasted fresh-picked. It made all the difference.”

  “You mean you should have grown them yourself?”

  “And the rice came from a package, brown and wild mixed together, with the simplest, no-fail instructions you ever saw.”

  “Good choice. Knowing what to shop for is half the battle.”

  “You’re not going to agree that I’m a bad cook, are you?”

  “Not to your face.”

  Liz stretched out her foot to give Jack’s leg a little push.

  “Are you sure Eleanor is all right?”

  “She’s been turning in early most nights. Going through sixty years’ worth of stuff is tiring. It’s hard for her to think of strangers living here.”

  “For you, as well?”

  Liz wasn’t sure what to say. She hadn’t been prepared for the depth of loss she sometimes felt packing away her grandmother’s things. It had hit her tonight, too. In the middle of dinner her pleasure in the evening had faded briefly, and she’d wished that the table the three of them were sitting at and the dishes they ate from and the candles they saw by didn’t all squeeze her heart. But then she had looked at Jack, on the other side of the wide table, and she’d thought that she could look at him for months, trying to understand all the angles and shadows and fleeting expressions of his face. Across a picnic table, across a carton of takeout food, it wouldn’t matter. The trouble was, they didn’t have months.

  “It’s just a house,” she said finally.

  Jack’s silence was comforting. He seemed to know she didn’t mean it, that a house was never just a house, but always full or empty of something that mattered. If she asked him what he was thinking, would he say that? Or would he say he was thinking of getting a refill of cocoa, or a new car, or tickets to the Bomber game?

  “Eleanor often talks about you, you and Tom and your cousins. It sounds as if you spent a lot of time over here when you were growing up.”

  “All the time we could. It was a wonderful place to be a child. Not just here, though. The woods, the creeks, even the town—we managed to have fun everywhere. Property lines didn’t mean much to us. It all felt like ours. It seemed…set in stone. Perfect and unchanging.”

  “That’s how it seems to me now.” She heard a note of humor in his voice. “Nearly perfect, anyway.”

  “It isn’t unchanging, though. It’s changed a lot.”

  “For example?”

  “Oh…the store, for one thing. Where that miniature supermarket stands, there used to be a little general store. Fishing bait in the freezer beside the meat, blocks of livestock salt beside the dish detergent. We went there at lunchtime, for jawbreakers and chips. And we used to gallop our horses on a strip of railway allowance on the edge of town. Now t
he track’s gone and it’s all houses, all in a city row. There was an alfalfa pasture where they’ve built the seniors’ home. When the flowers were open, the whole field buzzed. The new school’s an improvement. Pam and Emily love working there.”

  “But you preferred the old school?”

  “It was more homey. Four rooms for eight grades, creaking floorboards, a hand-rung bell. When it was too cold or wet to go out at lunch, we played in the basement.”

  “You liked it here. Why did it stop being a place you wanted to live?”

  The question seemed abrupt, a sudden wall in their conversation.

  “Maybe you changed,” he added quickly. “Needed something else.”

  “Art school.” She was grateful for the detour. “Galleries. Book launches.”

  “I bought a few of your books while I was in Brandon.”

  Her voice lightened. “A few?”

  “Read them this afternoon. Got comfy in that big dusty chair in my living room, with Lenny Breau in the background and a glass of Tullamore Dew in hand—”

  Laughing, Liz said, “I wonder how often my books are accompanied by mournful guitar and Irish whiskey?”

  “It was a bit of a contrast,” Jack admitted. “One of the books was nonfiction, about all the life on and around and under a huge oak tree. It was fun when I recognized the tree. It’s the big one in the grove in my yard.”

  Liz nodded, smiling.

  “I enjoyed it. Enjoyed all of them. That was you in some of the illustrations, wasn’t it? Always with another little girl.”

  “Susannah.”

  “The cousin who was supposed to come with you, the thoughtless one who got married in Alberta without her family.”

  “That’s the one. My uncle Will always said we were more sisters than sisters would have been. Except we look nothing alike. Sue has long dark straight hair, and mine’s all short and wavy, with no particular color. Brownish-blondish.”

  “Cinnamon,” Jack said. “Cinnamon and cloves.” He touched a curl that framed her chin. “It’s not all that short.”

  In the silence that followed she thought she could hear his breathing. She could see it, puffs of white fog each time he exhaled, mingling with the puffs that came from her. “It’s cold. We should go in.”

  They got up quickly, and took turns standing aside at the door, then went into the living room looking at everything but each other. The table lamp was on its lowest setting, giving the room a candlelit glow. Jack went straight to the stack of records Liz and Eleanor had dragged out of a closet the day before. He picked up as many as he could hold, fanning them like a hand of cards. “Wow. Original Chet Baker, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald.”

  “My grandfather was a jazz fan.” Liz shut the living room door so they wouldn’t disturb Eleanor. “There’s another box full of big band 78’s.”

  “Duke Ellington?”

  “And Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie…just about everyone.”

  “I wonder if Eleanor would be willing to sell some of them to me. Or does your family want to keep them?”

  “We’re not finding many takers for Grandma’s stuff. I’m sure she’d give you all you want.”

  “No one else wants these?” Jack’s voice was disbelieving. He looked at her grandfather’s record player the same way she’d seen him look at the dogs, his face soft and affectionate. “What a wonderful machine. No bells and whistles at all.” He slid an LP from its cover. Holding the edges between his fingertips, he placed it on the turntable and carefully set the needle in place. When the first notes came from the speakers, he smiled. “Hear the static? I love that sound.”

  Liz had moved closer to listen. When Jack straightened, they were only inches apart. She didn’t have any inclination to move back. She had to consciously keep her foot on the floor so she wouldn’t step forward, right into his arms. “Want to dance?”

  “Want to, sure, but it’s a skill I never mastered.”

  “It’s easy. We stand close and move our feet back and forth.”

  “Like advanced walking?”

  “There’s a complication. We’re supposed to hold each other, too.”

  “Oh, right. And there are all sorts of different ways to do that.”

  “I think, since we’re listening to Ella, we should do it the old-fashioned way.” Liz took hold of Jack’s left hand with her right and rested her left on his shoulder.

  “And I put my arm around you.” His hand came to rest on her lower back.

  “Higher, I think. Halfway up, in the middle, and then you press gently, to let me know where we’re going.”

  His hand traveled higher. “Here?” Light pressure brought her closer to him.

  “Just right.” She could feel his chest rise and fall with each breath he took, then the tightening of his thigh muscles as they began to dance.

  “You smell like gingersnaps.”

  Liz leaned away so she could see Jack’s face. “There’s no way I could smell like gingersnaps.”

  “You always do. Is it your soap? Your perfume?”

  “You’re imagining things. In spite of all your spreadsheets and good sense.”

  His arms tightened around her. “It’s a nice thing to imagine.”

  When the song ended, they danced for a moment to the sound of the needle on vinyl. Liz eased her hand out of Jack’s, feeling the roughness of his palm. “Did your skin get like this from one year of farming?”

  “Mostly.”

  The second song began, slow and bittersweet, but they had stopped dancing. “You have a scar.” It was an old one, slightly jagged, deep where it started under his forefinger and shallow by the time it stopped under his ring finger.

  “A saw went its own way.”

  “What happened?”

  “Sometimes I worked construction in the summer.”

  It wasn’t much of an explanation. He was so reluctant to talk about himself. “After retiring from the newspaper business?” She touched the hardened tips of his fingers. “And this is from playing guitar?”

  “Um-hum.”

  She held his hand to her cheek. It felt like warm sandpaper against her skin. When the impulse occurred to her, she moved without thinking, slipping his hand inside her blouse. His fingers fanned out, rising with the rise of her breast, stopping when they met a closed button.

  “Liz?”

  “Yes, Jack?”

  “Is this the cocoa talking?”

  She laughed, and firmly shut the door on the part of her mind that was trying to remind her why she had come home and how soon she was going back to Vancouver. She wanted to undo the button that had got in his way. She wanted to feel that warm roughness against her softest skin. The thought made her body hum.

  “Liz. Are you going to step away and turn on some more lights, or am I?”

  “Not me.”

  “Then I should.”

  “No.” She needed him, that was all there was to it. She said so, her lips against his neck, and felt an answering need in the tightness of his muscles, in the way his hands moved over her. She leaned closer, as close as she could, so his leg fit between hers and she could feel his heart beating against her chest. She would erase the sadness around his eyes, be as tightly with him as another person could be, rub out the solitary air that surrounded him. They were on the floor, his hands protecting her head and her back as they went down. She didn’t care how itchy the carpet was. They pulled at buttons and zippers, pushed cloth out of the way, and she made room for him, pulling his hips toward her. Then he made a sound that startled her, worried her, and the heat of his body was gone.

  “Jack?”

  He took a deep breath, almost laughing as he let it out. “Sorry. Dinner with you and Eleanor. I brought wine and pumpkin loaf. That’s all.”

  She needed him back, she needed to feel his weight. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I completely forgot to bring prophylactics on my visit to my grandmother’s. Had a last-minute list and everything. You al
ways forget something.” She was angry with him for thinking of it.

  He pulled the sides of her blouse together, trying to locate the right buttonhole for each button. “I don’t even have anything at home…it’s been a while.”

  “Me, too.” Liz sat up, gently pushing his hands away. “I’ll do it.” They were nearly naked, on her grandmother’s rug, with the light on. What had they been thinking? “I hope Grandma’s sleeping.”

  “The door’s shut. It’s a long hallway.”

  “It’s a good thing you remembered, Jack. I would have eventually, during the night or in the morning, and then I would have been so worried. I should have paid attention when you suggested turning on more lights. We could have listened to music, that would have been nice—”

  “The evening was perfect.” Jack helped Liz up, then got his shirt buttoned and tucked in. “I’ll get out of here while we still have any resolve. Next time, dinner at my place? I’ll go into Pine Point first.”

  She followed him to the kitchen door. She wanted to follow him all the way home, to make do with privacy and cross her fingers about the rest. “Or Winnipeg. If anyone we know saw you in Pine Point, there’d be a whole round of phone calls.”

  Jack pulled on his coat. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Almost makes you long for the big city, where nobody knows you and nobody cares.” He smiled. Liz couldn’t tell if he meant it.

  The dogs, who’d been sleeping by the stove, now waited expectantly beside Jack. “I’ll send them back to you once I’m home.”

  “I’ll be here.” Wide awake, and delivering a no-nonsense lecture to herself, whether she wanted to hear it or not.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JACK MOVED RESTLESSLY AROUND the kitchen. He’d been awake half the night thinking about Liz. Not just thinking, but almost feeling her. After dinner, when they’d sat on the porch together, and when they’d danced, he’d wanted two things. To go to bed with her, right then, and to stay with her forever. To make her his. It was an old-fashioned phrase. Too possessive for anyone’s good. This morning, he felt more civilized. His brain was working, telling him to slow down, to approach any potential relationship cautiously, the way he always did.